1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to furniture joinery and more particularly to slide rail and slide block constructions for joining furniture components.
2. Description of the Related Art
Furniture joinery is a term which generally refers to one or more elements structures used to join two or more components of a piece of furniture. As furniture manufacturing has evolved, the desire for knock-down furniture which may be manufactured in one location and shipped for assembly to another location has increased. Prior art joinery, sometimes utilizes dovetail construction which has various deficiencies. First, the dovetails are difficult to manufacture which results in higher costs being passed to the consumer. The dovetail design also has a weakened area where the dovetail extends from the workpiece. Such area is typically referred to as a neck and receives the majority of the stress created at the joint. Other prior art joinery may utilize a metal brace to join parts. However, these metal to wood connections must have multiple screws to create a lasting rigid joint. Further, chair rails and table aprons often require multiple screws or bolts at each corner of a furniture piece and/or clamps to insure furniture components are tight while glue dries. For example one screw may pass through a joinery element into a leg while other screws may extend into adjacent apron structures in order to tie all of the pieces together rigidly. The use of multiple fasteners or clamping mechanisms results in higher manufacturing costs and increased parts and labor to accomplish a desired task.
Another problem with some knock-down furniture designs is related to shipping. It is desirable to utilizing the least amount of volume in shipping. Where some designs for furniture joinery have required larger portions of a furniture piece to be assembled prior to shipping, the larger partial assemblies result in higher shipping costs where larger assemblies can not be nested within other structures being shipped. It is desirable that a furniture joinery be developed which decreases the number of fasteners required for ease of assembly and which also may be easily shipped from a collapsed configuration minimizing volume from a manufacturing facility to an assembly facility or a consumer.
Given the foregoing, it will be appreciated that a joinery assembly is desired which may be used with various types of furniture pieces and which allows for easy assembly of such pieces.